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Inventor of deadly AK47 gun, Mikhail Kalashnikov is dead

The designer of the AK47 Kalashnikov assault rifle that has killed more people than any other gun in the world died today aged 94.

Mikhail Kalashnikov, who was in his 20s when he created the gun just after World War Two, died in his home city of Izhevsk, near the Ural Mountains, where his gun is still made, the Russian state news agency Intar-Tass reported.

An estimated 100 million of his easy to use and assemble deadly weapon are now thought to be spread worldwide.

“Today news sad news has arrived that Mikhail Kalashnikov has died after a lengthy illness,” said the statement from the press secretary of the local government Viktor Chulkov.

Kalashnikov, who had been suffering from heart-related problems in recent years, had been in intensive care in Izhevsk for over a month.

The self-taught peasant turned tank mechanic who never finished school, achieved a remarkable and lasting feat of engineering.

As his rifles became synonymous with terrorists and rebel armies he was asked if he regretted engineering the weapon that probably killed more than any other.

“I invented it for the protection of the Motherland. I have no regrets and bear no responsibility for how politicians have used it,” he told them.

“I’m proud of my invention, but I’m sad that it is used by terrorists,” he said once.

“I would prefer to have invented a machine that people could use and that would help farmers with their work – for example a lawnmower.”

At his museum in Izhevsk, where he spent most of his life working at the factory that was eventually named after him, there is an mechanical lawnmower Kalashnikov invented to more easily take care of the lawn at his country house.

Born in 1919, Mikhail was the seventeenth child of well-off peasants.

When he was eleven, during Joseph Stalin’s purges his parents had their land confiscated, and the whole family was exiled to Siberia.

As the country began to prepare for World War Two Kalashnikov chose to go into a tank brigade.

There he was allowed to create several modifications – a tank shot counter, a running time meter – that were to be adopted for the whole Red Army, and made him famous.

Kalashnikov’s own career as a tank commander was cut short in the first few months of the conflict on the Eastern Front, when he was injured in the shoulder by a shell.

Kalashnikov says the idea for the AK47 came to him as he recuperated in hospital.

But the invention of the AK-47 was not a Eureka moment, but a trial-and-error process of modifications and improvements undertaken by a team over six years.

His design was based on several principles that had already been seen in British, Russian and Italian weapons to which the inventor had easy access as he drew up his blueprints.

Its main precursor was the German StG 44, the first truly effective automatic weapon of World War II.

He wanted to make it a simple to use and function as possible so it could be used in harsh Russian conditions and maintained easily by soldiers in the field.

His idea for the AK-47 was that it would not be a weapon designed for accuracy but to be used for close quarter fighting.

It was easy for a novice to fire and strip down to clean which led to its enduring legacy over 60 years on.

At a lavish Kremlin ceremony on Kalashnikov’s 90th birthday, then-President Dmitry Medvedev bestowed on him the highest state honour – the Hero of Russia gold star medal – and lauded him for creating “the national brand every Russian is proud of”.Kalashnikov facts

1. It in one of the few weapons that can be totally submerged in water and then still fire straight away.

2. Due to its simplicity and easy of manufacture it is the most copied gun in the world.

3. The inventor of the AK-47 did not profit from the gun. Communist states had no patents, and until its collapse in 1991, Kalashnikov was simply an employee of the Soviet Union.

4. The AK-47 can be stripped in under a minute and cleaned quickly in almost any climatic condition. Even if it isn’t cleaned, an AK-47 is still more likely to fire than any of its rivals as it has wide mechanical tollerances.

5. With only eight moving parts the AK-47 is cheap to manufacture and easy to use — so easy in fact that users can be taught how to properly handle this weapon in a single hour.

6. The cost of one machine on the “black market” range from just £6 to Afghanistan to £3,000 in India.

7. The Kalashnikov rifle is in the “Guinness Book of Records” as the most common weapon in the world. Currently, there are about 100 million AK. This means that 60 adult inhabitants of our planet have on one machine.

8. It is in service with the armies and special units of 106 countries of the world.

9. The Kalashnikov rifle is shown in the arms of some states. Currently, it is present in the coat of arms of the African country of Zimbabwe (since 1980), the coat of arms and the flag of Mozambique (since 1975), emblem of the Asian state of East Timor. From 1984 to 1997, AK was depicted on the emblem of the African state of Burkina Faso.

10. In some African countries, a newborn is given a name Kalash – in honor of the Kalashnikov assault rifle.